The World Health Organization said Friday that divided member states want up to a year of further negotiations on the missing piece of an international agreement on handling future pandemics.
After a week of grindingly slow progress in talks at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, countries came to a stop and will decide on the next steps at the annual assembly of member states, to be held in the Swiss city from May 18 to 23.
Wealthy countries and developing nations are at loggerheads over how the pandemic treaty, which was adopted last year, will work in practice.
The agreement’s unfinalised Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential, then sharing benefits derived from them, such as vaccines, tests and treatments.
“Real progress was made on the PABS annex and I am confident through continued negotiations differences will be overcome,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
“Member states should continue approaching the outstanding issues with a sense of urgency because the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if.
“The PABS annex is the last piece of the puzzle not only for the Pandemic Agreement but all initiatives that WHO and member states have implemented as a result of lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
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